DEATH RACE 2: Is That Supposed to Be Deep?

Death Race 2 (2010) – Directed by Roel Reine – Starring Luke Goss, Lauren Cohan, Ving Rhames, Danny Trejo, Sean Bean, Deobia Oparei, Tanit Phoenix, Fred Koehler, and Robin Shou.

So this was a bit weird.

If you’ve read my reviews of DEATH RACE 2000 and DEATH RACE, you know I like car movies and the DEATH RACE films. I was vaguely aware there was a DEATH RACE 2 that was a prequel, but I never bothered to watch it. The idea of a sequel that’s actually a prequel isn’t my preferred mode of storytelling (why they can’t move the DEATH RACE story forward is beyond me – if anyone can wear the mask, it’s easy enough to just keep the ruse going) but with the release of DEATH RACE 3 (which is a sequel to the prequel but still a prequel to the original) and both 2 and 3 being available, now was the time to finally watch it.

I’m glad I did, as DEATH RACE 2 is a very satisfying better-than-B, less-than-A movie, but that’s not the weird part.

The weird part is that this film has, as one of its antagonists, an actress named Lauren Cohan. She plays September Jones, and fills the uber-bitch role that Joan Allen played in the first film. Jones is the television executive/personality that comes up with the idea of Death Race after the public grows bored with Death Match, a gladiatorial event that pitted prisoners against one another. Jones is tough, driven, lacking in morals, willing to do whatever it is she has to do to get ahead, and totally hot.

I couldn’t ever remember seeing Ms. Cohan in anything before and (barring some insignificant role) I kinda figured I’d remember it if I did.

After watching DR2, I didn’t want to watch anything else I might review until after writing this review, or watch anything that I really wanted to, you know, actually watch, so I figured it was time to give The Walking Dead another try. I was halfway through episode 1 of season 2, as I wasn’t a huge fan of season 1 and couldn’t even make it through the first full episode of season 2 without stopping it and doing something else. A show that didn’t move me and an episode that didn’t move me made for the perfect choice, I finished that episode off and the cliffhanger was good enough I let episode 2 play and wouldn’t you know who showed up before that episode was up?

Yup, Lauren Cohan.

She’s just as good as Southern farm girl there as she is as bitchy amoralist here, but I think I’d like Walking Dead a hundred times better if September Jones was walking around in that post-apocalyptic world, making TV shows about criminals fighting zombies. (Did I just make a movie? Darn straight, I did. You’re welcome, Hollywood.)

I shouldn’t like DEATH RACE 2, but I really like it quite a bit. It’s the sequel as prequel, there’s not nearly enough car racing, and the ending gives you the feeling they run out of money so they just decided to stop it wherever they were in the script, but it’s actually a really violently fun film.

The premise is that we get the story of the first Frankenstein, the guy that dies (or allegedly dies) at the beginning of DEATH RACE. Carl “Luke” Lucas (Luke “Luke” Goss) is a driver for Markus Kane (Sean Bean), a criminal kingpin who you know will die before the end of the film because people don’t hire Sean Bean if the role doesn’t call for the character getting offed. The set-up is one of those typically dumb movie set ups: Kane wants to rob a bank (because bank robberies always go off so well) and gives Luke, his right hand man, a crew of young screw-ups.

And a bright yellow Mustang.

That’s right – a criminal mastermind gives his right hand man a highly difficult mission with a highly sketchy crew and a highly improbably getaway car. They go rob the bank but the young crew shoots up the place and Luke ends up getting caught and sent to Terminal Island, where Kane puts a hit out on him, even though they’re best mates and even though Luke hasn’t talked to the Feds. Luke, for some reason, doesn’t think Kane would ever put a hit out on him because he believes in bromance over business, while Kane believes in business over bromance.

At Terminal Island, Luke falls in with Goldberg (Danny Trejo) and Rocco (Joe Vaz), as he’s been assigned to Goldberg’s work detail. (I pointed out in my review of DEATH RACE how that film borrowed quite a bit from Shawshank Redemption, and I like to think they named Danny Trejo’s character Goldberg and had him say he was the last Mexican Jew as another playful nod to Frank Darabont’s film.) They’re eventually joined by Lists (Fred Koehler), a nerdy inmate that befriends Luke.

The opening hour of the film is devoted to the bank robbery and Death Match and even though I was here for the cars more than a prison drama, it was actually pretty entertaining. DR2 moves fast and doesn’t go cheap on the action. The racing finally arrives when Jones convinces Weyland (Ving Rhames) that-

Wait. Weyland? Head of Weyland International? Is this an attempt to tie DEATH RACE into the Alien/Predator universe? Is Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender going to spend Prometheus 2 driving race cars in the LV-500?

Because that would be awesome.

There’s plenty of drivers and/or cars from the first movie here and 14K (Robin Shou) actually has more to do this time around than last time. The driving stuff is good, and DR2 adequately provides the right balance between action and story. The ending is a bit daft – after Luke gets burned real bad and everyone thinks he’s dead, Jones creates the Frankenstein persona for him. The final race starts, Luke uses his car to kill Jones, and-

That’s it.

We don’t actually see the third race, which is a curious decision. Most people, one would imagine, are watching a movie called DEATH RACE to see the Death Race, but the filmmakers decided that it was a better choice to give us an hour of prison drama and 30 minutes of racing, and that there was no better climax than watching the alive-for-five minutes Frankenstein crush a woman to death with his Mustang. Watching it, I was like, “Yeah! Now the race!” and the movie was like, “Yeah! Now roll the credits.”

Curious.

Despite all of the shortcomings and issues, DEATH RACE 2 undeniably works.

BLACK DEATH: Because She Was Beautiful

Black Death (2010) – Directed by Christopher Smith – Starring Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, John Lynch, Tim McInnerny, Kimberley Nixon, Andy Nyman, Carice van Houten, Johnny Harris, and David Warner.

Every once in awhile a film comes along that restores your faith in the film industry. BLACK DEATH is such a film; this is not to suggest that BLACK DEATH is some amazing cinematic achievement that cannot be missed. Rather, it’s a straightforward film with an intelligent story that’s skillfully executed; BLACK DEATH is a good, serious movie with plenty of moral ambiguity and no easy answers.

Set during the 14th century European pandemic, BLACK DEATH tells the story of Ulric (Sean Bean) and his band of soldiers, charged with the church to investigate a remote village that’s been untouched by the plague. Joining them is Osmund (Eddie Redmayne), a young bishop from the nearby monastery who’s fallen in love with a woman named Averill (Kimberly Nixon). Osmund doubts his faith because of his love for Averill (whom he sends away to escape the plague), and prays for a sign from God.

That’s when Ulric shows up looking for volunteers to lead his men to the village deep in the marsh. Osmund takes this as a sign to go with Ulric, despite the objections of the Abbot (David Warner).

Through this early stage of the movie, there’s lots of dirt and death and darkness. Importantly, you feel all of it. It’s impossible not to compare BLACK DEATH with the recent Nicolas Cage flick, Season of the Witch, since I watched it recently, but where that movie is a slick, soulless, supernatural thriller, DEATH revels in the mud, confusion, and uncertainty that accompanied the plague.

Ulric is off to track down a witch, so he and his men journey through the countryside and through a spooky forest. Ulric’s men are professional killers and torturers, hardly upstanding Christians despite their working on the church’s behalf, but they’re not black hat evil guys, either. They’re just men, doing bad things because the Church has told them they can. That kind of moral confusion is everywhere in BLACK DEATH. Director Christopher Smith and screenwriter Dario Poloni make these costumes feel like real, individual men in a real, complex situation. It doesn’t matter that I couldn’t name any of them except Wolfstan (John Lynch) and Mold (Johnny Harris) without looking at the internet because when I was watching the movie I could count on them to do interesting things.

Osmund has trouble adjusting to everything the soldiers tell him; he’s a servant of God who feels he has betrayed God because of his love for Averill, and now he’s confronted with hardened soldiers who murder and torture who proclaim there’s witches in the world. Osmund doesn’t believe it and the men just kind of grunt and spit at him and tell him he’ll find out soon enough.

When they get to the spooky, mist-enshrouded woods, Osmund wakes up early so he can go look for Averill. When she left she told him she’d wait for him every morning for a week at a tree. When she said it I groaned at how stupid it was (okay, maybe I rolled my eyes instead of groaning), but the movie doesn’t do what you’d expect; Osmund doesn’t reunite with Averill at the end of the movie, but rather about halfway through he goes to the tree and finds … clothes, blood, and bad guys. There’s a big fight scene but the bigger impact is that Osmund’s world continues to spiral. He leads Ulric’s men through the marsh and into the village full of healthy people.

It’s here where the movie turns from pretty good to pretty awesome. The village isn’t just where the end of the movie takes place – there’s no final, big battle confrontation against the witch and her spooky locals – but a whole extended sequence that sees the soldiers asking for solace and the locals drugging their food and drink in order to kill them. It’s a really exciting turn when the average villagers get the best of the experienced soldiers. That even includes Ulric, who’s convinced there’s actual evil here, yet lets his guard down long enough to eat their food and drink their drink.

While this is going on, the head witch Langiva (a fantastic Carice van Houten) takes Osmund into the woods where she lets him witness a spooky ceremony where she brings Averill back from the dead. Osmund freaks, but it doesn’t matter because he still ends up in the water cage the next morning with the rest of the soldiers. Langiva and her henchman Hob (Tim McInnerny) order the soldiers to renounce their faith. The first guy refuses and gets crucified and gutted. Then the group’s charmer says he’ll renounce, so they make him kneel and renounce God while Ulric and his men stand in the water behind him, shouting at him to not lose faith. Langiva promises freedom if the men renounce, death if they don’t. Wolfstan implores the charmer to not renounce because these villagers are going to kill all of them anyway, but Swire renounces, gets led into the forest, and then hung from a tree.

While this is happening, Osmund huddles in the corner, shivering and crying. He gets pulled out next, Langiva promising him that he’ll renounce. She sends Osmund into a nearby building where Averill waits for him. When he gets there, Averill is all loony. Osmund is convinced it’s because she’s been brought back from the dead, which is an abomination to God, so he kills her and carries her dead body outside, then slashes Langiva across the cheek with a knife.

So Hob beats the crap out of him.

It’s Ulric’s turn next and he refuses to renounce despite being pulled wide by two horses. Before his body is literally ripped, he asks to see Osmund. Langiva allows it and Ulric orders Osmund to open his shirt, which reveals he’s been carrying the plague all along, meaning that he’s brought the plague into this village in order to enact God’s revenge.

It’s a wonderful sequence, building on Ulric’s hatred of the necromancer Langiva and Langiva’s hatred of Christians. Langiva “wins” by having Ulric’s arms and legs ripped off and Ulric “wins” by delivering the plague to the village, proving that Langiva isn’t a witch that can keep her people protected.

DEATH gets even better, each subsequent ending topping the previous one. Osmund goes after Langiva and when he finds her she tells him that she’s not a witch, at all, meaning she never brought Averill back from the dead because Averill was never dead. Langiva simply drugged the girl in order to perform a “miracle,” basically admitting to Osmund that she did it because people need a show in order to follow someone.

The realization that he was the only one to kill Averill absolutely crushes Osmund, and we learn from Wolfstan that Osmund went on to become a hardened killer for the church, scouring the countryside to bring witches to justice. The problem is that he keeps seeing Langiva “in the eyes of the accused,” meaning he’s putting innocent women to death in an attempt to get his revenge on the witch that admitted she wasn’t even a witch.

It’s an incredibly powerful ending. BLACK DEATH rewards you for sticking with it and then sticks with an honest, if unpleasant, ending. There’s no happy ending here, because how could there be a happy ending during the plague? Love in the Time of Pandemic? BLACK DEATH is too smart for that. The moral ambiguity between the Christians and the pagans is strong because both sides are right and wrong at various times, and when Wolfstan is securing Hob in the torture rack and asks why he would follow the witch, Hob’s answer is stunning in its simplicity.

“Because she was beautiful,” he says, without regret.

And in a world ravaged with the plague, what better reason does one need?

GOLDENEYE: Someday You’ll Have to Make Good On Your Innuendos

GoldenEye (1995) – The 17th James Bond Film; The 1st (of 4) Pierce Brosnan Films – Directed by Martin Campbell – Starring Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, Izabella Scorupco, Famke Janssen, Alan Cumming, Judi Dench, Joe Don Baker, Robbie Coltrane, and Desmond Llewelyn.

M: You don’t like me, Bond. You don’t like my methods. You think I’m an accountant, a bean counter more interested in my numbers than your instincts.

Bond: The thought had occurred to me.

M: Good. Because I think you’re a sexist, misogynist dinosaur. A relic of the Cold War, whose boyish charms, though lost on me, obviously appealed to that young girl I sent out to evaluate you.

Bond: Point taken.

M: Not quite, 007. If you think I don’t have the balls to send a man out to die, your instincts are dead wrong. I’ve no compunction about sending you to your death. But I won’t do it on a whim. Even with your cavalier attitude towards life. I want you to find GoldenEye, find out who took it and what they plan to do with it, and stop it. And if you should come across Ourumov, guilty or not, I don’t want you running off on some vendetta. Avenging Alec Trevelyan will not bring him back.

Bond: You didn’t get him killed.

M: Neither did you. Don’t make it personal.

Bond: Yes, ma’am. [turns to leave]

M: Bond. [Bond stop and turns to her] Come back alive.

(Taken from Wikiquote’s GoldenEye page.)

LICENSE TO KILL addressed fears that James Bond was ready to be put out to pasture by jamming him into a period-piece revenge flick. GOLDENEYE addresses the same concern head-on. The verbal sparring session between Bond and M quoted above is played brilliantly by Judi Dench and Pierce Brosnan, and it clearly lays out their positions – we have the older woman with the new age ideals on espionage versus the younger man with the previous age’s belief system. She doesn’t like him because he’s a reminder of what used to be and he doesn’t like her because she’s a reminder of what’s coming. The exchange nicely sets up who James Bond is in terms of the picture we’re watching.

The sequence does so much more, too, because it addresses that idea floating around out here in the real world that James Bond is no longer relevant in a post-Cold War world, and then spends the next 90 minutes proving that he’s as important as ever.

GOLDENEYE is a very good movie and it’s the first Bond film since THE SPY WHO LOVED ME that crackles with the kind of professional confidence that comes from having the right actor and the right director and the right script. Director Martin Campbell brings an assured hand to the helm that’s been lacking. Directors John Glen, Lewis Gilbert, and Guy Hamilton were all completely competent, but they all feel like house directors – they shoot competent movies in the preferred style and stay out of the way. It’s like they’re all shooting from the same playbook, which was probably the case. Obviously, they were all doing what the producers wanted because they all kept getting asked back, but Campbell is clearly a level or two above their skill set.

Unlike his predecessors, Campbell knows where to put his camera for maximum effect. A camera isn’t just placed HERE because it allows us to see everything important in this scene, but because this is the best place to give that next scene its biggest possible impact. I don’t mean to suggest that Campbell is channeling Sam Raimi’s Quick and the Dead style, either. There’s a term used to describe some players in baseball – “professional hitter.” The term means you’re not a superstar but you’re going to do what you’re supposed to based on the pitch and the situation. You’re not going to try to pull the outside pitch with a runner on first because that’s going to lead to a double play. You might do that with 2 strikes on you and a runner on 2nd or 3rd with less than 2 outs because that’s going to advance the runner.

That’s what Campbell is when it comes to directing – a professional. His camera is always in the right place. If a scene needs a simple shot, he gives it a simple shot. If a scene will be helped by putting a camera inside a Russian tank for a 2-second shot of Bond ducking inside the tank, then Campbell puts a camera there and gets that shot, too.

Campbell knows how to mix his close-ups and long-shots to make action scenes really pop. Shooting the tank chase scene and the one-on-one fisticuffs between 007 and 006 require different techniques and Campbell delivers on both accounts. The tank chase constantly shifts from close to long, from facial shots to spinning wheels, while constantly letting you feel the power at play and appreciate the coolness of it all.

It’s a fantastic chase sequence – imaginative and fun and aided by a rare GOLDENEYE appearance of the Bond theme, it’s the moment where Pierce Brosnan really becomes James Bond as it shows off Bond’s ability to improvise on the run and never lose his cool.

And that’s really what makes GOLDENEYE an exciting movie to watch – Brosnan and the producers clearly know who they want this Bond to be and they go out and make a film around that idea of this alleged relic, live-in-the-moment, professional spy. They parallel Bond not so much with 006 but with General Ourumov, a Russian General who was clearly more happy being a Soviet General. He has a scene similar to Bond’s frank discussion with M but where Bond’s decision is to put the job first, Ourumov puts himself first and sides with 006 to steal the GoldenEye weapon that Russia has developed.

Sean Bean plays 006/Alec Trevelyan/Janus, and he’s got a semi-complicated backstory that’s fitting for this post-Cold War era. His parents were among the Cossacks that fought with the Nazis during World War 2, then blah blah blah. It’s nice of them to include an actual motivation but really what it comes down to is Bond’s condemnation of Alec: “A worldwide financial meltdown, all so mad little Alec can settle a score with the world 50 years on.”

“Please,” Alec fires back, “spare me the Freud. I might as well ask if all those vodka martinis silence the screams of the men you’ve killed. Or if you find forgiveness in the arms of all those willing women … for all the dead ones you failed to protect.”

I think GOLDENEYE would have worked better if the producers built around the 006/007 conflict a bit more, but it pulls the 006 is Dead!-Gotcha!-006 is the Real Bad Buy! card instead. Bean and Brosnan make good enemies and when they’re on screen together GOLDENEYE works better than when they’re not, but the film never really develops Alec’s character, preferring to turn him into the kind of villain that forces himself on a woman because he’s mad that she’s Bond’s girl.

They do the sugar and spice routine with the women but I didn’t find either of them overly memorable in a good way. Natalya (Izabella Scorupco) is the doe-eyed computer programmer who eventually melts for Bond and Xenia (Famke Janssen) kills people by squeezing them to death with her knees. I suppose the idea is that it’s a new day and age so we need a woman who’s sexually aggressive and likes to gun people down (her machine gun rampage is similar to Chris Walken’s gundown back in A VIEW TO A KILL), but it doesn’t totally work for me.

Joe Don Baker is back but this time around he’s playing a CIA agent and not an arms dealer. He’s here to provide some comic relief and he delivers a few chuckles without becoming overbearing. His line to Bond about him being “just another stiff-assed Brit” and the way he’s totally willing to help but nonetheless plays the “I’m not here” game works because the filmmakers don’t oversell it.

The playfulness with Moneypenny is back in full force although with a contemporary twist. As she and Bond engage in their usual banter, Moneypenny tells him, “Someday you’ll have to make good on your innuendos” a few lines after telling Bond that his behavior could qualify as sexual harrasment. It’s another subtle, but effective indication that it’s a new day and age and while we can’t really call Moneypenny’s behavior aggressive, it’s certainly a sign that she knows where all the lines are drawn and is letting Bond know she knows how to navigate them.

The Eric Serra score is atrocious, and apparently the producers knew it, too, because they brought someone else in to re-score the tank-chase scene. The Tina Turner theme song (written by the half of U2 you know) is really pretty good and the opening titles are some of the best in a long time.

As for Brosnan, he’s very good here, managing to be both confident in his own abilities and yet always aware that he’s standing on a continually shifting geopolitical ground.

Taken as a whole, GOLDENEYE is a very good action movie with plenty of innovate action sequences (the opening bungee jump is still cool even if we’ve all realized that bungee jumping isn’t) and a cool-under-pressure Bond. Instead of feeling like a relic, GOLDENEYE feels confident and assured. Where some of the recent Bond movies have felt like they were trying to fit into their contemporary cinematic landscape, GOLDENEYE simply feels like they set out to make a good movie that’s aware of the political landscape but not beholden to whatever was popular in the theaters the year before.